Have you ever watched athletes prepare for a track race? They warm up, they stretch their muscles, they become mentally tuned in to the task ahead and their health regime is carefully monitored and geared for success.
The runner has a finishing line in sight.
For businesses, longevity and success also rely on maintaining perfect health, but organisational health requires a combined effort and willingness to work together. So, let’s take a look at how healthy your organisation is.
Does your organisation need a health check-up?
Let’s continue the analogy of the athlete and a successful business. Both need constant ‘nutrition’ to develop, function and perform. Just like the human body, your organisation is vulnerable, and needs a programme of regular health check-ups to ensure it operates at full strength.
As action coaches, we recognise the importance of good organisational health. We also notice that companies that prioritise and monitor their organisational health tend to remain successful. Promoting workplace wellness positively affects employee productivity and performance – a healthy culture is vital.
Improving organisational health
Do you often feel that your team members are pulling against you, and each other? They may even seem reluctant to come to the table and openly discuss how they feel. So how do you rectify this? How can you improve the organisational health of your business? When it comes to understanding organisational health, learning from the experiences of employees and their engagement levels are key. How willing are your staff to give accurate feedback, or discuss how they can adapt behaviours to help each other?
Firstly, you’ve got to get your team members in a comfortable position. You’ve got to ensure they’re confident about trusting you and are happy to open up. Remember, the opinions and perspectives of your team really matter. Often there’s a real discrepancy between how management see things and how they come across to staff, so it’s important to see things at grass roots level. You need to keep your finger on the pulse by listening to regular feedback, holding open discussions and being willing to change.
A question of trust
This week’s challenge revolves around trust. Unless everyone has a mutual trust for each other, progress will be limited. Think about the levels of trust within your team or your wider organisation? How much do your staff trust you (and each other) to actually be able to hold frank, open and honest discussions, and then work together to resolve issues? Giving your team a platform to voice their work-related problems leads to greater engagement and, in due course, a healthier workplace environment.
Just like our comparison to the competing athlete, the corporate race is built on long term strategies. Make organisational health wellbeing your goal this week and see if you can implement a few minor tweaks to improve workplace culture, morale, or team engagement.
We’d love to hear how you’ve managed to adapt, transform or make minor changes to the organisational health of your company. Feel free to drop us a line on 02392 454 111 to share your story, or get in touch if you’d like us to help you achieve your goals.
